Tunisia's Economic Crisis Deepens Under Saied as Political Space Narrows

Fifteen years after Tunisians toppled a dictator, they are back on the streets chanting the same demands: jobs, freedom, dignity. The difference is that the man they are now challenging came to power five years ago promising to deliver exactly those things.

On July 25, 2021, President Kais Saied suspended parliament, dismissed the prime minister, and began ruling by decree. He said the country faced a national crisis—years of political gridlock, corruption, and economic failure had left Tunisians exhausted. Many agreed. The decade after Ben Ali's fall in 2011 had brought competitive elections and greater political space, but it had also brought endless government reshuffles, little improvement in living standards, and persistent security threats. By 2020, unemployment stood at 17.4 percent. Public services remained weak. Prices kept rising. Saied, an outsider to the traditional political establishment, positioned himself as the solution. His opponents called it a coup.

What followed was a consolidation of power. Saied dissolved parliament entirely and oversaw a new constitution in 2022 that significantly strengthened the presidency. Opposition figures, journalists, lawyers, and activists began to face prosecution. In April 2025, a Tunis court sentenced 37 defendants to prison terms ranging from four to 66 years in what authorities called a conspiracy case involving allegations of plotting against state security. An appeals court upheld convictions against 34 of them in November 2025, sentencing them to between five and 45 years. Human Rights Watch and other organizations described the proceedings as politically motivated and part of a broader crackdown on dissent. The authorities rejected those characterizations and maintained the defendants had committed serious offences.

But the promised economic turnaround never materialized. This summer, temperatures in parts of Tunisia approached 50 degrees Celsius, pushing electricity demand to record levels. The national utility introduced rotating power cuts across several regions. Water-pumping stations shut down during the outages. Some people reported going days without running water. Bottled water disappeared from shelves. Long queues formed outside shops and around water trucks. Rebh, a 40-year-old cleaner from Tunis, described the squeeze plainly: "People are tired. They are choosing to cross the sea and die instead. We are not asking for the impossible. This is about water and electricity. We want to live as humans. We are feeling dead while we're still alive."

The economic pressures have collided with a dramatically narrowed political space. Journalist Manel Derbali, who has covered Tunisia through both periods, described the shift starkly. After 2011, journalists could access officials, raise concerns through parliament and ministries, and felt the street was behind them. "After July 25, all of these spaces became closed," she said. Government institutions now leave requests unanswered for months. The channels for dissent have contracted.

Yet the anger is not confined to the traditional opposition. The Nafas movement, which has organized recent demonstrations in Tunis, has brought together political parties and independent figures, and has attracted citizens who had never participated in political protests before. Rabii Qassem, a member of the collective, rejected the notion that the decade after 2011 was simply worse than what came after. "There were very serious crises," he acknowledged—unemployment, corruption, economic fragility. But that period also brought gains: greater freedom of expression, stronger civil society, more diverse media, and peaceful transfers of power through elections. After Saied's consolidation of power, those economic and social problems remained unresolved, joined now by a decline in checks on presidential authority and fewer spaces for civil society to operate.

This does not mean Tunisia is repeating 2011. Many Tunisians remain skeptical of the political parties that dominated the previous decade. Saied still has supporters who blame that era for stagnation and instability. Not every person angry about a water cut opposes the president. But the protests reveal how economic hardship and political repression have begun to feed into each other. Before 2021, Tunisians could blame a democratic system they saw as ineffective. After 2021, Saied dismantled much of that system and promised stronger presidential governance would deliver results. Five years later, the same grievances persist. The difference is that the avenues for challenging them have become narrower.